Let’s Close Military Veterans’ ‘Digital Divide’

Posted to Technology August 26, 2024 by Michael O’Rielly

 With little dispute, broadband internet technology delivers a wealth of opportunity and information to its users. Thus, much attention focuses on our nation’s “digital divide,” the term often used to describe the gap between the people able to connect to broadband of sufficient quality and those who are not.

With fiber, cable, fixed wireless, mobile, satellite and other technology options providing increasing connectivity, many consumers have multiple ways to obtain an internet connection. To address those still without, the federal government is spending more than $100 billion to expand broadband access to every American household by subsidizing internet network builds throughout unserved areas. In short, the much-discussed digital divide — if all things go right and bureaucratic burdens stay to a minimum — will be eliminated (albeit at a much slower pace than originally estimated).

But what about military veterans? Sadly, a digital divide-like situation remains. And it is limiting and hindering the healthcare they receive.

The reality is that most of our Veterans Affairs hospitals are using a decades-old Electronic Health Records computer system. Each of these antiquated systems has been in use longer than acceptable and inadequately patched repeatedly.

It has gotten to the point that each VA health records computer system is isolated from the rest of the healthcare world. That means VA hospitals are unable to share our veterans’ health records with other healthcare providers — public or private. Not with other VA hospitals. Not with Department of Defense facilities. And not with any non-military providers. That’s a serious healthcare defect and a significant disgrace to those who served our nation.

The inability of these systems to communicate with private providers is crippling the implementation of what most experts believe to be a sound veterans’ healthcare reform law, the VA MISSION Act of 2018. The law, in part, strengthened the nationwide VA Health Care System by empowering veterans with more healthcare options.

Former VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said it best about the VA MISSION Act, “The changes not only improve our ability to provide the healthcare veterans need but also when and where they need it. … It will also put veterans at the center of their care and offer options, including expanded telehealth and urgent care, so they can find the balance in the system that is right for them.”

Under the new Veterans Community Care Program, veterans are permitted to work with their VA healthcare provider or other staff to see if they are eligible to receive community care. “Community care” is essentially private providers helping veterans when local VA hospital cannot. But veterans, in most instances, cannot take advantage of this array of added care options easily or in a prompt fashion because many VA hospitals are unable to digitally share patient records.

Thankfully, help is attainable in the form of the MHS Genesis, a fully interoperable Electronic Health Records system. The Defense Department has completed implementation and adoption in all its facilities. Attention has now turned to the VA.

Today, there are 84 VA hospitals nationwide. So far, five have implemented the new MHS Genesis system. The latest to go online was in March of this year —  the Capt. James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Lovell FHCC) in Illinois.

According to the VA EHR Modernization Integration Office’s statement, the Lowell joint deployment of the Electronic Health Records system,“will provide a more coordinated experience for patients and the clinicians who care for them.”

Likewise, Dr. Lester Martínez-López , the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, stated, “The launch of the Federal EHR at Lovell FHCC will help DOD and VA deliver on the promise made to those who serve our country to provide seamless care from their first day of active service to the transition to veteran status.”  

Implementation at the Lowell facility is an explicit acknowledgment that private providers, from whom veterans have legal permission to receive care thanks to the VA MISSION Act, are important partners in veterans’ healthcare equation.

For far too many of our veterans, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to take advantage of their new healthcare choices because their respective VA hospitals are digitally walled off from the rest of the world.

Now, for the tens of thousands of veterans of Lovell and the four other VA hospitals that have implemented MHS Genesis, those freedoms and choices have arrived. In essence, their digital divide has been closed. It is time to finish the implementation of MHS Genesis throughout the entire VA hospital system and close it for the rest of America’s veterans.

Michael O’Rielly served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2020. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.